


Holistic

by Shadow_Logic



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Coming of Age, Family Drama, Gen, Heartbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 11:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12652641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Logic/pseuds/Shadow_Logic
Summary: Bits, odds and ends of memories that knit together into the young man known as Jonathan Byers.





	1. First Memory

The Byers house is small.

He can go through it all in one good run, and sometimes it gets really cold in the winter, but he likes it. He likes saying "hello Byers house" when he picks up the phone and he likes it like it is right now, when it's alone.

When he is alone, he likes to sit and imagine things. He can do that in the quiet. He will look out windows and imagine changing the colors and moving the things he sees around.

His Mom is out working late – she does that sometimes, even now that her belly is growing large and round and heavy.

His Dad is out.

Just out.

Dad sometimes talks about cars and races, and he knows he wanted to be a car racer when he was a kid, but there are no racing cars in Hawkins that he knows of.

He doesn't like being alone with his Dad. He always feels like Dad's not happy to be alone with him, and sometimes when he drinks too much, Dad will start pushing him around in a way that really isn't nice, that makes him feel scared and alone and makes him want to cry…but somehow, he doesn't.

But dad will push and shove more. It makes him more scared. "Be a man. C'mon, hit me back," Dad'll say, and his breath will stink and his eyes won't focus. And he pitches to and fro like he's dizzy from the swings except he's not, and sometimes he'll fall to the side and roll onto his back and stay there, quiet, or whispering the bad swear words that not even Mom uses when she's really angry. He'll stay that for a while.

And he usually makes it back onto a chair or into the bed before Mom comes home and sees him, but sometimes he doesn't and there will be fights with lots of screaming if Dad is awake, soft at first but louder and louder the longer Dad stays quiet and doesn't answer any of Mom's 'answer me!'s, and Jonathan will go hide where he can be safe.

One of those days the screams are so loud that he goes to get the tape recorder – there are no tapes, because those are outside where the screams are - and he just turns it on and starts moving around the dial. It's like magic – he can't hear the screams, but that first time the recorder is so loud that he can't hear anything else and then there is banging on his door and his Dad pokes his head inside to ask him what the Heh…uh, what the heck is the noise about.

So he learns to play it just soft enough, so that he knows when the fight is over and he can go pretend he was never doing anything in the first place.

And he does this now. He moves the dial until he likes what he hears and then he drags one of the dining room chairs over. He can use the boxes to climb, and he does; he sits by the window, pretending that the leaves are falling in a slanted line like the world is moving. He pretends the sun is shining from another place. He pretends there is a person, a friendly man like Santa Claus, only dressed in a black coat like in the book A Christmas Carol, amongst the leaves.

He forgets his father. He forgets the fights. And maybe his mom will be the first person home, and he will get to tell her about the pictures he made up in his head that day, and for a moment it will be OK.

Jonathan Byers loves days like this.


	2. Little Brother

Sometime before they start teaching him about "April showers" in school, Will is born.

And for a few strange, magical hours, everything is OK.

'The birth' is 'easy', the doctors say, but they still take his Mom away for a long time while he and his Dad stay outside on uncomfortable plastic chairs, and his Dad keeps putting his face in his hands and twitching about and saying things like "Shouldn't have done that" and lots of "please". Jonathan thinks he was not supposed to hear that, like when his Mom says bad words, but they still make him feel funny inside.

Sad.

Nobody asks him, but Jonathan is sure that 'the birth' is a really difficult, scary thing, because when they finally let him in to see the new baby, his Mom's hair is all up in a cap like the one for the bath, and she looks red in the face and as tired as she ever has. She is slumping on the bed and he is a little scared to touch her.

But Mom smiles big and speaks to him softly. "Say hi to your little brother Jonathan. See how small he is? See how soft and white and tiny? You used to be like that too, you know?" She smiles, and his Dad smiles too, and Jonathan wonders if Will has dome some sort of magic and fixed things here.

This feels OK.

* * *

( _One day he'll realize how his parents smiled across a distance at each other, like strangers, that Lonnie didn't try to touch Mom, that she didn't seem to need Lonnie close, but right then, all he sees are the smiles and the softness in their postures after weeks and weeks of screams drowned out by the radio._ )

* * *

They take Will back home and put him in the old crib that used to be Jonathan's (he can't remember that though, being in there), and Jonathan  _does_  feel a little jealous of all the attention Will gets from his mother over the next few days. She coos and is all gentle and speaks to him softly and Jonathan gets to help do things and bring things, but his mother is looking away (at Will) whenever he brings her things that she asked for…

But his Dad is out about as much as he used to, and he doesn't really see him pick up baby Will that much.

One day, Jonathan goes to shop for groceries with his Mom and he can hear Will crying from out in the driveway when they come back…and Dad?

He's sleeping on the couch with the TV on too high. Jonathan looks down and sees the bottle – it probably fell while he was asleep.

And if he can see it, if he can smell that smell that is sharp and like sweat, but not sweat, then so can his Mom.

That night he has to hide in his room, but he can't turn up the radio all the way. He could, but he can hear Will crying in the background right along with Mom and Dad yelling, on and on and on. Nobody goes to baby Will, but Jonathan is too scared to go, because he needs to walk into the hallway where all the screaming is coming from, and that is too much for him right now.

He knows screams won't hurt him, but there are loud thumps out there now too…

And he feels so afraid for Will. Out there, alone.

When the screaming is over and Will has cried himself out and so has his Mom, Jonathan creeps out of his hiding place. There are things on the floor that weren't there when he and Mom came home, and nobody is around except Mom with her face down on the kitchen table, very still. He's sure she won't pick up her head if he tries to get her to do it.

He goes to see Will in his parents' room. He is asleep, but his face is all red and white. It must be the tears.

The screams got very very loud, and Will was all alone.

He's so small. He can't move. He couldn't go away and hide if he tried.

Jonathan is never jealous of the baby again.


	3. He's good at taking care of himself

The first time Jonathan cooks for himself, (and, OK, for Will) is when Lonnie is finally gone, and he hasn't seen bottles or beer cans around the house for a while. It's been an OK week, but this day has been a really good day, because his Art teacher and his English teacher have both said "Excellent work!" and he has stickers on his homework to show for it.

There is more quiet in the house now when he arrives, and he likes it. It lets him do things and think things better.

After a while Jonathan's really getting hungry though, and he knows Will probably is too. Jonathan's done most of his homework, but he thinks he needs his Mom for the Math.

And the sun is setting, and there is no Mom.

That's OK though. He also knows his Mom will probably come home late. She's OK – just working.

Jonathan had thought Mom could be around more now that Lonnie's gone. But he knows that, because Lonnie's papers keep coming in the mail and he hasn't answered his phone since the last visit (that hunting trip in the woods), his Mom has had to take more hours and come home later.

She'll be home at some point, fretting because they haven't eaten yet, fretting because she has to work that late so that they can eat, fretting because it's all just a big circle of things she has to do to get something else done that is just as important.

Jonathan hates that she feels that way, and wishes they could do better to help.

Little Will is a good kid though. He's really quiet, grown out of the crying of being a baby, and easy to keep busy. He loves to make scribbles on paper, on the walls, on anything blank and willing to stay still, really, and right now he is playing quietly in his crib in Mom's room. He's doing something with his stuffed dinosaur, making her move about beneath his blanket.

He must be hungry, and should be screaming his head off about it, but he's sitting there all quiet instead.

Jonathan is really, really proud of his little brother.

Maybe he can run down to Benny's, get the good fries and big burgers, and give them all a surprise?

Jonathan likes this idea. He even runs to his room to check his savings, but his piggy bank sounds empty, so no…no burgers tonight.

But Jonathan really, really wants to help. So he goes poking through the kitchen.

There's something in a plastic bag that is good to cook, somewhere in the freezer, and he knows that meats go into the pan to fry with a little oil, but he can't make himself open the freezer yet. That hunting trip with Lonnie is still fresh in his mind, and every time his mother holds that door open he can see that unmentionable thing all over again, and his stomach turns and he can't take a bite of whatever it is she's made.

He's had a hard time with chicken, because it looks white and soft.

Jonathan checks the kitchen cupboards instead. There is a can of peas up way over his head, so that is a no. He thinks he can probably pull down the bag of bread.

OK, so he has bread. He makes mental note of that and then looks into the fridge.

There is cheese. Sandwhiches! He can make those. Maybe with a little ketchup and mustard they'll be as good as the burgers, because burgers really do have a lot of sauces in them. That's where the flavor is, right?

When he goes to pull down the bag of bread, a colorful can falls noisily. Soup?

Yes, it is a can of tomato soup.

The soup is always ready quickly. It's all about putting it in the pot, warming it up. He wouldn't have to use the oil or anything (which might get him in trouble with Mom if he burns himself), and he can even still make the sandwhiches.

That pie iron thing Lonnie had for their camping trip would have been awesome to have now, but he can maybe toast the bread in the toaster a little.

Jonathan puts the can back on the floor, heads to Mom's room and looks in on Will. It's his job to keep an eye on him, and Jonathan needs to do that while he cooks.

He trots over to his little brother "Will?" The little guy turns to him. "Hi Will. I'm going to make dinner, so you stay here and play OK?" The dinosaur seems to be doing a pretty good job at keeping him busy, but Jonathan doesn't want to take any chances.

Jonathan takes a good, deep breath and pushes on the crib. It budges. He pushes it some more, finally finding the right strength, and pushes it out of the room. He looks: inside, Will looks around in awe as his crib zooms into the living room. Jonathan makes revving noises right then, and Will seems amused.

He leaves Will where he can see him and gets to work.

* * *

When the door opens too soon, Jonathan can only stare as his mother bustles in, already doing that fretting thing with her hands. She's whispering "Oh my darlings I'm so sorry", and again Jonathan realizes she didn't expect them here.

And then she sees Will in his crib on the other side of the table. She freezes for all of a second, looks around and of course she can see Jonathan.

He's standing on an old crate he found in the shed so he can see what he's doing in the pot. He still has the big, long spoon in the pot.

The toaster dings.

"Jonathan honey…what are you doing?"

"Cooking...?" He's cautious.

Mom looks at him, open-mouthed, and Jonathan thinks he can see her eye twitch. Then she bustles over and gathers him in her arms, getting him off the crate and standing over the pot for a second, staring like she can't see it.

Or like she sees it and doesn't believe it.

The opened, empty soup can is on the counter when she turns. Oh no. Now Jonathan is sure he's done something wrong: you're supposed to throw it away first, aren't you?

"Did you open this soup can?"

"Yes…?"

Jonathan goes for the toasted bread timidly. His mother follows him with her eyes, still all not moving and wide-eyed in front of the pot of soup. So he picks up the bread off the toaster and goes to get the packet of cheese where he left it on the table, and quietly puts together the three sandwhiches, with mustard. He plops them on a plate that was clean and on the drying rack, and hopes he hasn't messed up too bad.

He might have sniffled.

But it all turns out to be for nothing, because his Mom walks over and gathers him again, off his chakr and close to her. He hugs her around the middle and wonders if she always felt so small and fragile, like he could break her with the strength of his hug, even with his small arms.

"I'm sorry baby. You did so good Jonathan. So good. You're such a good boy, baby, such a good boy…" His mother starts crying again in the middle, and Jonathan wonders if it's happy tears or sad tears. He was aiming for the good ones, after all.

She rubs at her face the moment he lets go. "So, what's for dinner?" she marches back to the stove with a completely different expression. She's smiling a very, very wobbly smile "Tomato soup! Oh I love tomato soup! And cheese sandwhiches!"

And after he helps his mother serve it, holding the bowls steady while she pours the soup in, after she sets his plate of sandwhiches in the center of the table and straps Will on his high chair, after she cuts Will's sandwhich into a really small triangle, Jonathan thinks his mother is really, really proud of him.


	4. The List

Once Will falls in with a kid called Mike Wheeler, Jonathan discovers that food can really, really be good.

Mrs. Wheeler starts sending them the occasional casserole or pan of meatloaf, and they are tasty in ways that don't involve adding ketchup or mustard or mayo, or even lots of pepper. Apparently, there are more things you can add to food, like herbs and other kinds of spices, and they all taste DIFFERENT.

And one time when he and his mother go to pick Will up in the late afternoon after a playdate, Mrs. Wheeler gives Jonathan something called a Watergate salad while she and his mother go round up the boys.

It is  _the best_. He asks his mother in the car how vegetables can taste so  _good_ , and she tells him that the secret to Watergate salads is that they don't have vegetables at all.

Of course, his mother vetoes his and Will's suggestion that they exchange their vegetables for Watergate salad for ever and ever after, even before they've left the Wheeler's cul-de-sac behind.

Oh well, at least they tried.

The Wheelers' house also contains Nancy Wheeler. She's cool, Jonathan thinks. One day, he comes into the house to find Will while their mothers share mom-ish things and comments in the kitchen. Nancy is up in her room, reading a book cross-legged on her bed.

Jonathan knocks on the open door to let her know he's there. "Hi Nancy."

She starts, moving like she wants to grab the pink blanket wrinkled into a ball by her knees. "Hi Jonathan. The boys are in the yard pretending they're orcs."

"OK." The book she's reading catches his eye, what with all the black spaces and dramatic lettering on the cover. "What're you reading?"

Nancy looks at him wide-eyed and slides the book off her lap. "Shhh!" She looks around, like someone might be listening in. "Um…I'm not supposed to be reading it, OK? My mom would die. It's…" she flashes the cover at him. It's something called 'The Vampire Lestat'.

Ok, so a book about vampires. He's read  _Dracula_. It was cool, but he's branching out in other directions. He likes his books a little more about humans, a little more complex in feelings. He liked  _A Wrinkle in Time_  though, because the creatures had an explanation.

But he still likes Nancy a little more than before for reading, and even more for reading something that isn't trashy romance novels.

(And she's hiding books that aren't porn from her mom. Now that's cool too - he likes people who like things just because, not because someone else told them they should, or shouldn't in this case.)

He doesn't really like a whole lot of people. Everyone is on probation with him until they prove to be good and that he can trust them. But he quickly puts Nancy on that list after their conversation.

(Even if they don't really talk  _all_  that much.)

* * *

Steve Harrington doesn't make the list, however.

Seventh grade is the year the girls are suddenly tripping over each other when Steve walks by. Jonathan finds it a little confusing, because Steve is pretty short and thin, nothing like the tan bodybuilders he'd expect girls to be looking at. He's also not in any sports since he left Little League, and that boggles Jonathan's mind even more, because girls in the movies are after the quarterbacks. Steve always has good, new clothes and seems to have a shiny new bicycle every year, but Jonathan wonders why girls would care for that. Aren't girls supposed to like guys who go do big, manly things and prove to them that they can protect them?

Then again, his mom is a girl and she definitely doesn't like it when men try to take over her things. Maybe he's just got them all wrong.

Steve seems pretty bewildered by it himself, Jonathan notices. Steve's always had friends, but Jonathan thinks he sees a flash of surprise on Steve's face every time one of his feeble quips or weak jokes is met with hysterical laughter. Steve also doesn't seem to notice the way girls who are going to make a turn left instead turn right in the hall to say hello.

Jonathan feels a little bad for Steve: it must make him feel all smothered. At least, Jonathan would feel that way, if it were him. And Steve gave him his pencil back one day in Art class when it rolled under Steve's desk, and he doesn't shove Jonathan out of his way when they're lining up at the lunch line, on the odd days when Jonathan wants a hot meal (read: has money to spare). Steve's not bad.

Then one day, someone at their lockers shouts "Make way for king Steve!" as Steve and his friends David and Mark are walking past. This should make people laugh, but there are smiles and expectant looks, even a few cheers instead. People flatten themselves to the wall like a parade is coming through. Steve looks around at this all, as if he's waking up from a long dream and everything looks new and wonderful, and he smiles back.

That same midday, he  _orders_  Ally Vemeyer out of the table she and Barbara Holland are eating at – it's the closest to the doors, lit up by the cafeteria windows. Apparently, it's a nice spot, and Steve wants it.

Steve's smile has a nasty edge to it while he delivers his mandate. Two guys Jonathan barely knows come up behind him when the girls don't get up immediately, and even Steve looks a little surprised when Ally and Barbara grab their lunch trays and hightail it out of there. Barbara barely manages to grab her empty milk carton as she rushes to her feet.

Steve is smiling at himself as the two boys clap him in the back. A small retinue of other boys comes up to the table, an even smaller one of girls, and Jonathan feels like he's seen enough.

He looks down at his homemade sandwhich and his little thermos of milk and his apple, and quietly promises himself to always, always watch his back around Steve from now on.


	5. Jonathan Byers, the space oddity

Seventh grade is (also) the year Jonathan falls for Laurie McCorkle.

He doesn't really do much, doesn't try to talk to her, doesn't try to do flashy things to impress her – it's not like Laurie is going to like HIM back, after all – but he does look at her when she runs. She's in the track team and has such a pretty, even run that he wishes he could capture it somehow. It's almost like watching a gazelle. Jonathan is an observer after all, so he's more than OK just looking.

Then Valentine's Day comes around and he gets this stupid idea in his head.

It's really, really stupid in retrospect. But if Jonathan is honest with himself at all, he'd thought it was a pretty good idea, right up until it was way too late.

He doesn't try to ask Laurie to the Valentine's dance. He is definitely not going. Hawkins Middle School does carnations though, and he gets it in his head that he'll send one to Laurie – just a rose or a small bag of cookies. Nothing big. And then he gets it into his head that he'll put an anonymous card on the gift. He even goes and copies a few lines from a Bowie song that's stuck in his head.

 _For here_  
Am I sitting in a tin can  
Far above the world  
Planet Earth is blue  
And there's nothing I can do

_Though I'm past_   
_one hundred thousand miles_   
_I'm feeling very still_   
_And I think my spaceship knows which way to go_

He writes 'to you' after the lyrics actually end. He folds the little pink notecard in half, asks the girl running the stand to send it with the flower, and doesn't leave his name or sign it or anything. All he really wants is to make sure Laurie knows, somehow, that she's got eyes like he thinks the Earth looks like from space, and that he's far away, but glad to know her anyway.

Jonathan figures someone must have recognized his penmanship, or someone running the carnation delivery must have told.

All the same, as he closes his locker door and gets ready for the bike ride home at the end of Valentine's Day, calm and content even though he won't be a part of the outings of tonight, he feels footsteps behind him.

And there is Laurie McCorkle, her pretty, fine-featured face wet and blotchy, her hands quivering on the little piece of pink notecard that he'd written on so happily just three days ago.

"Wh-why would you do something like this Byers!?  _Why!?_ " She nearly burst into tears as she rips the card in half clumsily and tries to throw it at him. The paper simply ignores her angry motion and floats to the ground, undisturbed.

"I would never touch you, not with a fifty foot pole! You could use a bath! Your hair's always greasy and-and, and you're CREEPY."

And then she ambles away, still crying like something in her hurts.

* * *

Jonathan can't remember the ride home. He just appears back in his room, lying in bed on his side with an ache so vast and all-encompassing, he swears he'll choke if he tries to turn around on his back. He curls into a tight ball, like he used to when he had stomach aches as a younger kid, but the pain remains.

He can't summon a single tear. All he wants is to drown out the image of Laurie McCorkle looking at him like she hated him, like he's gone and hurt her somehow.

He can't imagine how. Really, really, he can't.

* * *

The next day is a Thursday, and by lunch Jonathan wishes he could flash forward to Friday so bad it hurts.

People glance back at him with ugly smirks on their faces at odd intervals as he walks to his classes. After first but before second period, someone sandwhiches the torn-up note between the hinges of his locker. Jonathan pulls it out breathlessly: someone has taped it back together, scribbling the word CREEP across the middle of it in big, blocky print. The thick lines of the black permanent marker bleed into the paper, so that his note looks like it's in broken English now.

Throwing it in the trash pretty much guarantees that someone else will find it and read it, so he chucks it in the back of the locker behind his books, to be taken home and buried in peace out by the shed.

That should be it, but the day just gets worse: Jonathan realizes he's left his sandwhich and thermos behind after the lunch bell rings.

He doesn't want to eat the icky cafeteria food. What he really wants is a good, homemade turkey sandwhich, Mrs. Wheeler's tuna casserole, a few dozen Benny's burgers, a Watergate salad. He wants to go home now and hide, far away from all the smirks and staring eyes.

What he  _does_  have is a few more periods of class to go and some cash. He'll fall behind a few dollars on the savings fund for the camera, but he can't make it without something in his stomach today, even if it's trashy cafeteria food. Jonathan feels sick enough already without getting weak and lightheaded too.

He goes and joins the line, shrinking into himself just like his Mom always tells him not to. He notices a cadre of girls by the line exit, at the other side, and his stomach twists itself into knots.

They're tight coils by the time he reaches the end of the line and comes out with his tray. And he's right – once he steps out into the open, the girls follow him, circling him as he walks like angry bees.

They don't gang up on him for a fight. Instead, they sidle up to him at every step, calling him 'gross' and 'a creep', pushing at him slightly. One of them snarls "stay away from her, OK Byers?", another one shoves him. Then they float away, still close together like a cloud, talking amongst themselves, whispering things like "freak" and "perv".

He ends up eating maybe a quarter of what's on his tray.

* * *

It's weeks and weeks later when he finally overhears someone at the boy's locker room. He's putting his clothes away, standing very still but not trying to hide, not really. It's amazing what people will overlook when they don't meant to find anything.

"Seems like he'll give Laurie a go, now that he's sure she's not into weirdos and stuff."

He never does find it out who they mean, or if it's Steve or someone else. But Jonathan quietly promises never to look at someone like he looked at Laurie, not ever, not unless it's through his camera lens and he's safe at the other side of the glass.


End file.
